Tag: favorites

In the early twentieth century, two little girls caused a massive media event when they claimed to have taken photographs of faeries near the brook in their backyard in Cottingley, England. The photographs caught the imagination of the country, and celebrities like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, descended upon the area, hoping to spy faeries themselves.

Eventually, the little girls admitted it had all been a hoax, and that they had set up the photographs using paper cutouts of faeries from a catalog.

Good thing, too, because all the attention was really cramping the style of the faeries who liked to pop over to Cottingley for a visit.

Do you think there is any truth in the legends? What mythological creatures do you think might be hiding out there? Unicorns? Bigfoot? The Loch Ness Monsteottingley

In the early twentieth century, two little girls caused a massive media event when they claimed to have taken photographs of faeries near the brook in their backyard in Cottingley, England. The photographs caught the imagination of the country, and celebrities like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, descended upon the area, hoping to spy faeries themselves.

Eventually, the little girls admitted it had all been a hoax, and that they had set up the photographs using paper cutouts of faeries from a catalog.

Good thing, too, because all the attention was really cramping the style of the faeries who liked to pop over to Cottingley for a visit.

Do you think there is any truth in the legends? What mythological creatures do you think might be hiding out there? Unicorns? Bigfoot? The Loch Ness Monster?

Hi Everyone, Today I’ve got some really cool stuff to share with you. Some background info on the Unseelie Court and Wizards. I am also sharing a link for the first 5 chapters of The Girl Who Never Was as well as the book trailer reveal!!

*The Unseelie Court*

In Scottish folklore, the Unseelie Court was the “evil” court set up in opposition to the Seelie Court. I really liked the idea of there being no such clear dichotomy any longer: Both courts had become corrupted and dangerous to the Otherworld. Because the Seelie Court was traditionally considered the court of light, I placed it in bright sunlight. By contrast, the Unseelie Court was traditionally considered the court of darkness, so I placed it underground, accessible to our world by going below. This is not to imply that the Seelie Court is accessible by going above, but I wanted to keep the dichotomy between the two. In my head, they almost exist on the same sheet of paper, but one is on top and one is on the bottom. The Seelie Court rules the Otherworld and its tendrils are everywhere. I wanted the Unseelie Court to be its own little fiefdom within that kingdom, tolerated by the Seelie Court only because the Unseelies had assembled enough power of their own to resist them. The Unseelies do not mind being creatures of the darkness, and they are happy to stay in their self-contained world. Their border control measures are intense, and they seldom interact with the rest of the Otherworld. The Seelie Court would tell you this is because they do not wish the Unseelies to have access to the Otherworld, but the Unseelie Court has no desire to branch out into the rest of the Otherworld. They have no interest in political power, they only seek to be left alone to their dark magic. The Unseelies will grant asylum on occasion to those who need it. Because it is the only independent place in the Otherworld, it is the only place to hide from Seelies. Also, because it is so inaccessible, all sorts of amazing legends have grown up about it in the Otherworld. Otherworld creatures are taught that everyone and everything could be living in the Unseelie Court, every terrifying creature that could be imagined, because none of the Otherworld creatures really know what happens there.

*Wizards*

In the days when the borders between the Thisworld and the Otherworld were open, wizards (the female counterparts were known as witches) were quite common and it was considered a well-respected calling. It was favored, in the beginning, by families that already had great wealth, because there was little money to be made off of it. Magic, however, was a dangerous thing to practice, exhausting and potentially deadly if abused, so it was mostly favored for second sons as an alternative to the clergy. Witches and wizards attended universities of magic in order to learn their craft. Each developed talents for a particular type of magic that acted as their specialty. They tended to be naturally self-confident and arrogant, as belief and intent were two necessary ingredients to magic, which resulted in many clashes and feuds. Every witch and wizard consider themselves to be the best, and every other witch and wizard to be a pretender to their throne. Magical alliances were frequently fraught with tensions between overbearing personalities, and, as such, wizards and witches tended to be loners when it came to each other, even if some did develop friendships outside of the field. (William Blaxton had a reputation for being an especially gregarious wizard when it came to interspecies relationships, which was how he ended up forging the New World path.) When magic began to fall out of favor in the onslaught of science, it began to be seen as a haven for eccentrics. Most of the last of the wizards and witches were adventurous souls, drawn to the unpredictability of the practice of magic, and many of them ended up in the New World, which they thought at the time might be more accepting of the idea of the continued existence of everyday magic. Will Blaxton settled Boston. His fellow wizard Roger Williams settled Rhode Island, slightly farther south, together with help from their fellow witch Anne Hutchinson. Meanwhile, another wizard, self-styled Lord Timothy Dexter, settled north of Boston in Newburyport. In the early days, the witches and wizards thrived and were well-respected members of the community, but eventually they began to clash more and more with the humans who arrived and who were not interested in continuing on the practice of magic. Most of the witches and wizards went underground and rewrote the history books to take the power of their magic out of the words. The Salem Witch Trials were an effort to ferret out all of the remaining magic in the New World, but it was sadly entirely ineffective and managed merely to kill a great many innocent people, as the witches and wizards had already gone into hiding by that time.

A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.
Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

My Review:

I am a grown ass woman so I do not throw out the OMG very often. Actually not at all but there you have it… OMFG!! I have no idea as to how to go about this review. Let me collect myself and I’ll get back to you! And yes this is absolutely going on my favorite shelf!

I have had a moment to think about what to say and there just aren’t any words that I can come up with that do this book justice. To me it was real and deep, something that the young adult genre lacks a lot of. E. Lockhart has a beautiful, mesmorizing way with words. There were several passages through out this book that I highlighted not only because I wanted to share them with you but because I wanted to be able to look back and read them again and again and expierence the raw emotion that this book brought out of me. I decided that I will not share any of my favorite quotes or passages in this review like I had first intended. I am going to ask that you read this piece of art work for yourself because that is exactly what it is… ART! This is not a book you want to hear all about from someone else. This my fellow readers is a book you want to expierence all your own. And from my own personal experience, let me warn you, get ready for the tears!!